MEMS-Scanner Testbench for High Field of View LiDAR Applications

LiDAR sensors are a key technology for enabling safe autonomous cars. For highway applications, such systems must have a long range, and the covered field of view (FoV) of >45° must be scanned with resolutions higher than 0.1°. These specifications can be met by modern MEMS scanners, which are chosen for their robustness and scalability. For the automotive market, these sensors, and especially the scanners within, must be tested to the highest standards. We propose a novel measurement setup for characterizing and validating these kinds of scanners based on a position-sensitive detector (PSD) by imaging a deflected laser beam from a diffuser screen onto the PSD. A so-called ray trace shifting technique (RTST) was used to minimize manual calibration effort, to reduce external mounting errors, and to enable dynamical one-shot measurements of the scanner’s steering angle over large FoVs. This paper describes the overall setup and the calibration method according to a standard camera calibration. We further show the setup’s capabilities by validating it with a statically set rotating stage and a dynamically oscillating MEMS scanner. The setup was found to be capable of measuring LiDAR MEMS scanners with a maximum FoV of 47° dynamically, with an uncertainty of less than 1%.

The Advancement of Virtual Reality in Automotive Market Research: Challenges and Opportunities

Virtual Reality (VR) can play a key role in automotive marketing research, lowering costs and shortening the time to launch a new product. However, few VR applications support automotive customers’ experiences during the early stages of product design. This study aims to identify and characterize into attributes the challenges and opportunities for the application of Virtual Reality in car clinics through a systematic review of the literature and patents. We searched PatentScout, ScienceDirect, Springer, and IEEEXplore for studies published between the databases’ inception and July 2020. Of the 77,383 patents and 336,785 articles identified, 72 and 13 were eligible, respectively. We discovered that patents are strongly concentrated by a few inventors, that the United States has the most records, and that the most prevalent applications relate to devices for automatically reading responders’ emotions in virtual environments. The articles revealed sixteen categories of challenges and opportunities: cost, location to customers, flexibility in interactions, model transportation, depth perception, haptic perception, motion, movement perception/physical collision, color and texture, sound feedback, product interaction/manipulation, visual–spatial, graphic quality, intuitiveness, cybersecurity, and cybersickness. Virtual Reality may be used for automotive marketing research but key factors such as hardware and software specification, stimulus quality, and survey objectives must be considered.

Features of the development of the automotive market as the basis of strategies for the transformation of intangible resources of companies

The dynamics of the passenger car market in the Russian Federation is expected to be sinusoidal in 2020, taking into account the fall in sales in the spring and the manifestation of deferred demand in the summer and autumn. After a period of global self-isolation and the abolition of quarantine measures, sales began to level out gradually based on the satisfaction of deferred demand, including due to government support measures. But the recovery process is very unstable. The driver of growth in post-pandemic sales indicators, as well as indicators of the effectiveness of commercial activities, is the management of intangible resources, taking into account their availability, possibility of use, legal and technical protection. Automotive companies are working out new development strategies based on the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, which form a special layer of intangible resources. Transformation of the structure of intangible resources becomes obvious and deserves deep research.

The Advancement of Virtual Reality in Automotive Market Research: Challenges and Opportunities

Virtual reality (VR) can play a key role in automotive marketing research, lowering costs and shortening the time it takes to bring a new product to market. However, there are still few VR applications that support automotive customers' experiences during the early stages of product development. Through a systematic review of literature and patents, this study aims to identify the challenges and opportunities for the application of virtual reality in car clinics, and to categorize them into attributes. We searched through the knowledge databases of PatentScout, ScienceDirect, Springer, and IEEEXplore. We found 72 patents with a high concentration in a few inventors. The United States of America presented the greatest number of records and the most common applications related to the apparatus for automatically reading respondents' reactions in a virtual environment. In terms of articles, we found 19 research papers that discussed sixteen categories identified as challenges and opportunities for automotive marketing research: 1) cost, 2) location to customers, 3) flexibility in interactions, 4) model transportation, 5) depth perception, 6) haptic perception, 7) motion, 8) movement perception/ physical collision, 9) color and texture, 10) sound feedback, 11) product interaction/manipulation, 12) visual-spatial, 13) graphic quality, 14) intuitiveness, 15) cybersecurity and 16) cybersickness. We conclude that the automotive industry can employ virtual reality for marketing research, but relevant elements such as hardware and software definition, stimulus quality, and research objectives, among others, must be considered.

Real-time monitoring software for electric vehicle battery power based on WeChat applet

Batteries are an important part of contemporary automobiles. With the increase in the output of family cars and the development of science and technology, the demand for batteries in the automotive market is increasing rapidly. A major problem with existing car batteries is that it is difficult for users to obtain information about the current battery power in real time, especially when driving away from vehicles and cars, there are huge safety hazards; therefore, a real-time monitoring of car battery power is researched. The system has important practical significance.

Socio-Economic Barriers to Adoption of Electric Vehicles in South Africa: Case Study of the Gauteng Province

Electric vehicles (EVs) were introduced into the South African market in 2013, and their adoption rate has been very low. There are limited existing studies covering consumer perceptions towards EVs in Africa and, thus, this study investigated possible socio-economic barriers present in the South African automotive market that impede the adoption or consumer purchase intention of EVs. The survey was conducted in the Gauteng Province in South Africa using questionnaires comprised of Likert-type questions. The analysis was conducted using statistical methods comprising mainly of frequency tables and Chi-squared tests on contingency tables. The findings of the study on barriers to adoption of EVs in the market highlighted the high purchase price, high battery price, and high likelihood for owning a secondary vehicle based on the current circumstances as the main purchase intention barriers that the respondents in the Gauteng Province accentuated. However, generally the willingness to buy EVs was high for a majority of the factors that were presented. With these perceived positive opinions from respondents, it is down to government and private companies to provide a conducive environment for the consumers.

Assessment of Social Acceptance for Autonomous Vehicles in Southeastern Poland

New technologies reaching out for meeting the needs of an aging population in developed countries have given rise to the development and gradual implementation of the concept of an autonomous vehicle (AV) and have even made it a necessity and an important business paradigm. However, in parallel, there is a discussion about consumer preferences and the willingness to pay for new car technologies and intelligent vehicle options. The main aim of the study was to analyze the impact of selected factors on the perception of the future of autonomous cars by respondents from the area of Southeastern Poland in terms of a comparison with traditional cars, with particular emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of this concept. The research presented in this study was conducted in 2019 among a group of 579 respondents. Data analysis made it possible to identify potential advantages and disadvantages of the concept of introducing autonomous cars. A positive result of the survey is that 68% of respondents stated that AV will be gradually introduced to our market, which confirms the high acceptance of this technology by Poles. The obtained research results may be valuable information for governmental and local authorities, but also for car manufacturers and their future users. It is an important issue in the area of shaping the strategy of actions concerning further directions of development on the automotive market.

Prospects for the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision in Transport Systems and Connected Cars

As statistics show, the use of artificial intelligence and machine vision for cars can significantly improve road safety. Even before self-driving vehicles dominate the road, connected vehicles with computer vision-based ADAS will dramatically reduce road accidents. New automotive technologies such as machine vision not only improve road safety, but also open new business opportunities for companies from related industries and sectors such as insurance, car sharing and driver training. Soon, the automotive market, car service services and industries close to transport will change dramatically. This means that those who invest in such developments right now will be able to seize leadership in the era of the spread of innovative technologies.In modern cars, video cameras are used not only as an alternative to the rear-view mirror but are also an important part of active safety systems. Their task, first, is to support collision protection systems through object detection. Cameras are also used to keep track of the lane, to automatically recognise road signs and traffic lights, and monitor the condition of drivers. Together with radars and lidars, they are used to control unmanned vehicles. However, these are far from all the possible areas of useful application of video cameras on board a vehicle. With development of artificial intelligence systems, a decrease in size and an increase in the power of on-board computing facilities, as well as with an increase in the throughput of mobile communications and development of cloud technologies, it becomes possible to implement new services based on video cameras and computer vision.For this reason, the objective of this article is to analyse the trends in development of artificial intelligence, computer vision systems and, considering these trends, to form a list of useful services based on them. The article provides information about what cars can «see» today, how they do it, and what useful services can be implemented for drivers, for transport organisations and for areas related to transport.

CONTINUING A VEHICLE FITTED WITH RUN FLAT TYRES

Modern vehicles are equipped with many systems that monitor the security of driving. An example is the tyre pressure monitoring system that shows a fault if the tyre pressure is lowered. Low tyre pressure or no pressure at all (0 kPa) means that continuing driving may lead to a dangerous situation. Prolonged driving of the vehicle at 0 kPa in the tyre ends with tyre burst, rim damage, or even loss of stability. Therefore, on the automotive market, manufacturers offer Run Flat tyres adapted to emergency driving with a pressure of 0 kPa. This article presents the results of an experimental research in the field of vehicle dynamics, continuing driving a vehicle with a loss of tyre pressure. These tests were carried out not only to confirm the data provided by tyre manufacturers and to verify the vehicle's driveability but also to analyse the effectiveness of stopping vehicles equipped with this type of tyres using, for example, police studs, especially when vehicles are used for crimes or terrorist activities.

Investigation on the Model-Based Control Performance in Vehicle Safety Critical Scenarios with Varying Tyre Limits

In recent years the increasing needs of reducing the costs of car development expressed by the automotive market have determined a rapid development of virtual driver prototyping tools that aims at reproducing vehicle behaviors. Nevertheless, these advanced tools are still not designed to exploit the entire vehicle dynamics potential, preferring to assure the minimum requirements in the worst possible operating conditions instead. Furthermore, their calibration is typically performed in a pre-defined strict range of operating conditions, established by specific regulations or OEM routines. For this reason, their performance can considerably decrease in particularly crucial safetycritical situations, where the environmental conditions (rain, snow, ice), the road singularities (oil stains, puddles, holes), and the tyre thermal and ageing phenomena can deeply affect the adherence potential. The objective of the work is to investigate the possibility of the physical model-based control to take into account the variations in terms of the dynamic behavior of the systems and of the boundary conditions. Different scenarios with specific tyre thermal and wear conditions have been tested on diverse road surfaces validating the designed model predictive control algorithm in a hardware-in-the-loop real-time environment and demonstrating the augmented reliability of an advanced virtual driver aware of available information concerning the tyre dynamic limits. The multidisciplinary proposal will provide a paradigm shift in the development of strategies and a solid breakthrough towards enhanced development of the driving automatization systems, unleashing the potential of physical modeling to the next level of vehicle control, able to exploit and to take into account the multi-physical tyre variations.